Elk/Wapiti Cavalry?

[Gwyain]

There have been quite a few threads proposing alternate cavalry animals floating about at times, usually they involve either Moose (European Elk) or Reindeer/Caribou, which both have their criticisms. In the case of Moose, its that they're fairly solitary animals who aren't much for herding, which makes them poor choices for unit cavalry. In addition, and perhaps more damning, they're browsers not grazers - and rather picky browsers at that. This limits their food during campaign and makes in difficult to bring food along fro them. Reindeer meanwhile are rather small animals who are fairly ill suited for work as a riding animal, especially over distance.

(American) Elk/Wapiti* haven't to my knowledge been actively discussed for this, and they don't have either of those challenges. Wapiti are primarily grazers, though they will browse as well, which makes them very easy to feed in most any terrain; even in more difficult terrain, they can and will eat fodder too. Meanwhile, they're quite a bit larger than Reindeer, average sized males weigh in around 700 lbs and the largest subspecies can range as large as 1100 lbs, which of course starts putting us in horse size territory. They're quite fast, and have been recorded running up to 40 mph before. Elk/Wapiti are migrators like horses, and as a result are pretty used to long travel times, which is a plus for their endurance. They are also herd animals, which has often been conducive for domestication with other species.

Obviously, like Moose and Reindeer, Wapiti still have the potential problem that is antlers, but for somewhere like North America which doesn't have horses, that prospect of a mount seems worth it anyways. What does everyone think?

Edited to include migration/endurance and info on their social structures.

*In much of Eurasia the term Elk is used to refer to Moose, as opposed to the American Elk (also known as the Wapiti). In general I will be using Wapiti in order to avoid any possible confusion between them and Moose.

 

[GuildedAgeNostalgia]

Don't the Sami in Finland ride/domesticate Reindeer?

Also, have you ever watched the Guy on a buffalo videos?

 

[Atterdag]

Don't the Sami in Finland ride/domesticate Reindeer?

Nope, they herd them but they’re not domesticated. I don’t think they fully can be.

 

[DrakonFin]

From an older thread about this matter (which is relevant in general, too):

There are some very concrete limits to what reindeer can carry, even if they are domesticated. See this photo of Finnish journalists riding reindeer in Eastern Siberia, 2017:

View attachment 360230

Even if these are bigger reindeer than in Finland, the locals estimated to the Finns that they can carry only people weighing up to 80 kg. This means that carrying a lightly-dressed grown man alone would be a challenge to the reindeer, and there would not be any realistic chance to carry additional load, like baggage, weapons, armor, etc. For a comparison, even a small Icelandic horse can carry over 100 kg of weight, which on balance is superior.

Thus, even if reindeer could be domesticated in a large scale, and cool as reindeer cavalry would be in theory, reindeer would be good beasts of burden in wilderness conditions (like they are used in Siberia, say, even today) but as cavalry mounts they would be so inferior in comparison to even the smallest of horses that it would be rather nonsensical to use them if there is any chance to acquire horses.

 

[Gwyain]

So the discussion on reindeer is interesting, but much of it has already been discussed before, including in the thread @DrakonFin linked to. American Elk, otherwise known as Wapiti, are what I'd really like to focus on since they don't appear to have been discussed as a mount before, including in the aforementioned thread. As I said in the OP, Elk/Wapiti are quite a bit larger than reindeer as well as faster and stronger. Presumably over time their size can be increased more with selective breeding, but at 1100 lbs we're already talking about a mount capable of carrying a rider and some gear, which is a whole lot closer to a horse analog than anything else in the Americas has to offer.

 

[twovultures]

The large, backwards-pointing antlers of the wapiti is a potential issue, as riders might get impaled. A domestic wapiti would probably have to be bred to have smaller horns if it is used for cavalry.

Wapiti are fast, but what is their endurance? A domesticate that is very strong but doesn't have the constitution to spend all day pulling a travois is not going to be very useful for Native Americans, and therefore will not be worth the effort of domesticating.

 

[Gwyain]

Wapiti are fast, but what is their endurance? A domesticate that is very strong but doesn't have the constitution to spend all day pulling a travois is not going to be very useful for Native Americans, and therefore will not be worth the effort of domesticating.

That's something I should have put in the opening post, I'll go ahead and edit it, but Elks are pretty big migrators so endurance shouldn't be much of a problem for them.

The large, backwards-pointing antlers of the wapiti is a potential issue, as riders might get impaled. A domestic wapiti would probably have to be bred to have smaller horns if it is used for cavalry.

That's definitely one of their big problems, getting gored in the face isn't exactly conducive to much of anything. I'm imagining the domestication pathway for them would be spending a while just using them travois, which might evolve into a chariot over time. That would give some time to breed for smaller horns, and eventually they can start being used directly as mounts. We obviously are limited in our knowledge of early horse domestication, but its often suggested that riding came later than draft, so there are some parallels there.

 

[TxAggie]

I was thinking about this the other day for a thread about domesticated animals in a hypothetical Rio Grande civilization, and people were suggesting deer. I ran it through my head, and every single civilization I could think of that's above 30 North and has trees (North America, all of Europe, Russia, Iran, Siberia, China, Japan, you name it....) also has deer. None of those cultures ever managed to domesticate the animals. And our ancestors weren't wimps either - they domesticated 1000 lb auroch bulls, wild boars, and even GD wolves. But deer for whatever reason seem to be out of the cards.

 

[Emperor-of-New-Zealand]

But deer for whatever reason seem to be out of the cards.

The fallow deer has been domesticated to a certain extent, to the point that colour morphs exist, so it has been done. Whether an animal is or isn't domesticated in OTL though largely depends on the need for said animal. Europeans didn't need to domesticate the deer, because they had the sheep, goat, cow, donkey and horse. Asians had the same animals, plus the water buffalo. There's just no real niche for the deer (meat, leather, milk, labour - other animals already fulfilled these purposes).

 

[Ganishka]

Maybe we could selective breed them to have stronger backs.

 

[twovultures]

That's definitely one of their big problems, getting gored in the face isn't exactly conducive to much of anything. I'm imagining the domestication pathway for them would be spending a while just using them travois, which might evolve into a chariot over time.

Come to think of it, the antlers are potentially useful as an anchor for reins if you want to control an elk while it's pulling loads (for at least part of the year, anyway), so I can see a similar trajectory: driven elk for initial domestication, and after a few thousand years of breeding, small-horned varieties are created that allows riders to get on their backs. Over the course of another thousand years, saddles, stirrups and other innovations allow riding to develop.

 

[JSilvy]

In the case of moose, I'm wondering how difficult it would be. Could a tamed moose population be maintained through the feeding of low-fiber leafy vegetables?

 

[Gwyain]

I was thinking about this the other day for a thread about domesticated animals in a hypothetical Rio Grande civilization, and people were suggesting deer. I ran it through my head, and every single civilization I could think of that's above 30 North and has trees (North America, all of Europe, Russia, Iran, Siberia, China, Japan, you name it....) also has deer. None of those cultures ever managed to domesticate the animals. And our ancestors weren't wimps either - they domesticated 1000 lb auroch bulls, wild boars, and even GD wolves. But deer for whatever reason seem to be out of the cards.

That was me that suggested white-tailed deer in there, its part of what got me thinking more about Wapiti actually.

Dvalron's thesis on domestication is that its a long, expensive process to undertake and as a result isn't worth it if you have something that fills that niche already. If we look at other examples in the world, I think that thesis generally holds. Fore example, its estimated by ethnobotanists that ~1/2 of all the worlds plants are edible in some form, but in spite of that, only a dozen species account for around 80% of the worlds caloric intake(!). The rest of the non animal calories largely come from a couple dozen more species. Its not worth the effort to go and domesticate a new grain (which takes years and years) if you already have half a dozen species of wheat, plus oats, barley, etc. Lyme Grass is an edible grass species closley related to the other cereal species, its very cold hardy and has been used as a famine food in places like Iceland in the past. Every bit of research about lyme grass today is related to crossbreeding it with wheat to create more cold hardy cultivars - not to domesticate it, and that's because the difference in time between enhancing what we have and creating something new isn't worth it. It stand to reason that this same principle applies to animals as well as plants. Though their ranges overlap greatly today, the different bos species (taurine cattle, zebu, water bufallo, gayal, etc) were all domesticated in different areas, in places where ranges overlapped, generally only one was domesticated there; taurine cattle over Eurasian Bison for example.

Deer operate in a similar agricultural niche to goats, they're both browsers that can excel on marginal land, but if you already have goats, why put in the time for deer? I'm positing that Wapiti might work in a similar niche to horses, which makes me doubt we would see their domestication in Eurasia*; horses are already there. The Americas are a different story of course, there's no competition for that agricultural niche until the Colombian Exchange.

North America does have a problem for this though, the range where Wapiti are native never had particularly large developed agriculture, which has largely been a precondition for animal domestication. I'm kinda skirting around that because North American agriculture is a thread unto itself, but it is something important to keep in the back the mind when discussing this.

*Now, if someone can come up with a plausible reason for their domestication in Eurasia, I'm all for it, but I suspect North America offers the path of least resistance, so its what I'm going to focus on.

 

[Gwyain]

Come to think of it, the antlers are potentially useful as an anchor for reins if you want to control an elk while it's pulling loads (for at least part of the year, anyway), so I can see a similar trajectory: driven elk for initial domestication, and after a few thousand years of breeding, small-horned varieties are created that allows riders to get on their backs. Over the course of another thousand years, saddles, stirrups and other innovations allow riding to develop.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if selecting specifically for smaller antler size will be necessary. Domestication tends to bring on incidental changes like floppy years or wagging tails, as seen strikingly in the domestic silver fox. I wonder if antler size might also go that way, since larger antlers are generally linked to greater aggressiveness in males, so what might happen is that during the domestication antler size reduces incidently due to pleiotropy to the point that its not an issue for a rider.

 

[Emperor-of-New-Zealand]

@Gwyain raises another good point about domestication being tied to agriculture, and that North American peoples didn't have much in the way of agriculture to justify domesticating large animals, unlike the Andean civilisations which domesticated the llama as a pack animal.

Domestication of animals really boils down to, "What can we use that for?" which begins with "What does it do already?".

I'm of the opinion that literally any animal can be domesticated given enough time and resources, but there are reasons certain species were not domesticated (mainly due to a lack of time and resources, and necessity). Elephants are oft brought up as well, but elephants have an inordinarily long gestation period and require huge amounts of food. The elephants used in war or used as muscle in Southeast Asia are not domesticated but tamed, which is a simpler process (any animal can be tamed as well, but that takes a great deal of risk). Most species of deer farmed today are tamed as well (such as the European red deer).

 

[Revachah]

Maybe encourage the horse to remain a status symbol of men and have a female Calvary

 

[NorCalifornio]

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if selecting specifically for smaller antler size will be necessary. Domestication tends to bring on incidental changes like floppy years or wagging tails, as seen strikingly in the domestic silver fox. I wonder if antler size might also go that way, since larger antlers are generally linked to greater aggressiveness in males, so what might happen is that during the domestication antler size reduces incidently due to pleiotropy to the point that its not an issue for a rider.

This is a good point. I know horns aren't the same as antlers, but decreased horn size has been noted as part of the "domestication syndrome" that leads to floppy ears and whatnot.

 

[JSilvy]

Returning to the moose, what would it take for one to feed and maintain a moose provided that one was domesticated? Would it be viable to provide a moose with enough leafy plants in an enclosure?

 

[Arkenfolm]

In the case of moose, I'm wondering how difficult it would be. Could a tamed moose population be maintained through the feeding of low-fiber leafy vegetables?

It's difficult because of the high cost of feeding them. You'd need a forestry system in part centered around it which is slashed and burned to get the moose the sort of stems and bark they need from trees that readily establish on burnt land like birches. Aquaculture helps too since moose like a lot of water plants and are semi-aquatic mammals. That's why moose are most likely to be status symbols than animals commonly used.

But this is a bit off-topic here. Elk have a simpler diet, even if they are usually smaller and have less impressive antlers.

 

[Gwyain]

Returning to the moose, what would it take for one to feed and maintain a moose provided that one was domesticated? Would it be viable to provide a moose with enough leafy plants in an enclosure?

Moose diet consists mostly of shoots and branches from trees such as birch and willow, forbs, and aquatic plants. Trees make up the biggest component, but aquatic plants are also crucial for sodium intake. They also cannot be fed hay like other livestock can, moose can't actually digest it and it can potentially kill them. You can feed them pretty easily on silvipasture though, and like goats they're good at finding food for themselves. They're actually quite a bit like a much larger goat in terms of diet and behavior.

Returning to Wapiti though, their diet is super easy, they mostly graze on grasses, but they'll also browse leaves, forbs, and branches as they're available. They can eat hay, sillage, and fodder if decent pasture isn't available, or they can browse if they don't have that. While they aren't quite as large as moose, they are still in the size range of ponies and smaller horse breeds.

[T]hey are usually have less impressive antlers.

Which some might say a plus if you're going to be riding it.